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Paris My Heart (2017) • On Saint Ronan Street (1976)
Two Novels, Same Story, 40 Years and Two Cities Far Apart.
ABOUT:
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1. Overview
I've written nearly fifty books by now (a vigorous age 70 in 2019). At author events and anywhere else readers will listen, I like to say that each of those books is like a beloved child, with a story all its own. There are a handful of special cases among them, and this is one of them.
I wrote a nostalgic, romantic novel while stationed far from home with the U.S. Army during the 1970s. That novel (a manuscript cryptically titled simply Jon+Merile returned with me from West Germany in 1980 and sat in a box in the garage, gathering dust along with over 400 pages of poetry, a lot of clippings from my early career as a young newspaper reporter, and at least one teenage novel.
That teenage novel, by the way, is now at last published under the title Far Wars: Cosmopolis or City of the Universe. If you think it's a long way back to Jon+Merile (or On Saint Ronan Street, 41 years) consider that from 2019 (Blade Runner Year, and that's my personal favorite all-time film) back to 1969 is just exactly fifty years or half a century. Yes, I've been around that long and hope to last a few more years. I was 15 years old when I started the novel then titled Cosmopolis, or City of the Universe and 19 when I completed it as a sophomore in Room 310 at McMahon Hall, University of Connecticut at Storrs, CT. By then I had written well over 300 pp of poetry, was a published poet, and had worked three summers as a student newspaper intern reporter at the now defunct New Haven Journal-Courier. I've been passionate about writing all of my life, from the day at age 7 when I wrote my first poem in a small town in Luxembourg, to being a writer in the U.S. Army (general officer correspondence, award certificates, and more), to making a living for years as a technical writer/analyst in the aerospace and computer systems development industries. That provides a little bit more context for my story about the two novels (On Saint Ronan Street and Paris Affaire) that are the main topic of these notes.
Later in life (a youthful-seeming late 60s) while up to my ears in 21st Century small press and Internet publishing, I dusted all my dusty, yellowed manuscripts off and paid a trusted friend to type them and digitize them. I paid his trusty sister (BA & MS) to give them a good, professional line edit. I had forgotten most of what I had written. Collectively, we were surprised to find solid, publishable work (not to mention the sentimental and personal value of these novels and poems for me).
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